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THE APOLLONIAN a Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (Online, Open-Access, Peer-Reviewed) THE APOLLONIAN A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (Online, Open-Access, Peer-Reviewed) Vol. 1, Issue. 1 (September 2014) || ISSN 2393-9001 Chief Editor: Girindra Narayan Roy Editor: Anindya Shekhar Purakayastha Associate Editors: Lalima Chakraverty & Maria Pia Pagani Executive Editors: Subashish Bhattacharjee & Saikat Guha Research Article: The Wheel that Turned: Manoranjan Byapari Writes Back in Itibritte Chandal Jiban Jaydeep Sarangi & Angana Dutta Find this and other research articles at: theapollonian.in THE APOLLONIAN Vol. 1, Issue. 1 (September 2014) ISSN 2393-9001 The Wheel that Turned: Manoranjan Byapari Writes Back in Itibritte Chandal Jiban Jaydeep Sarangi & Angana Dutta Manoranjan Byapari’s autobiography Itibritte Chandal Jibanis a clarion call to observe the structures of Indian social set ups and people from multiple subaltern perspectives – set ups that are usually heavily represented by the more privileged social groups. In the social matrix of various stratification parameters that frame a person’s social identity, Byapari is one who has been multiply disadvantaged. Dalit autobiography is more of a social narrative than a personal account. But Byapari amalgamates both in a structural unit. His case is a living discourse where individual and the social shake hands and create a dilemma for a scholar. It reminds us The Prisons We Broke by Baby Kamble which provides an insight into the oppressive caste and patriarchal tenets of the Indian society. It reclaims memory to locate the Mahar society before it was empowered by Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. Caste-wise he has been a chandal (outcaste), nationality-wise a refugee, occupationally perpetually in the unorganised sector, a child labourer, educationally illiterate up till adulthood, and frequently tagged as the criminal! However, in spite of his disadvantaged positions, he has also been a philanthropist, the labour movement activist, the writer, the fighter who never gives up hope and the dauntless saviour of the fellow sufferers. Byapari’s life is a great challenge to the different stereotypes formed by society about the subaltern people – who do not usually ‚write‛ for themselves. His accounts are a wealth of information about the particular types of subaltern populations’ – lives, family, marriage, threats, expectations, ethics, ambitions, oppressions, worldview, avenues for social mobility, blockages – in all their total social and psychological world. With documentation of 90 THE APOLLONIAN Vol. 1, Issue. 1 (September 2014) ISSN 2393-9001 life experiences of above 60 years, Itibritte Chandal Jiban is well rooted in concrete political and social context of Bengal and India, and how major social changes have influenced the lives of the disadvantaged. The autobiography is a first-hand documentation of the dynamics of the complex of stratification systems from the ‘bottom’, how they maintain themselves, and how multiple systems interact to mostly reinforce, rather than cancel out each other. The book powerfully subverts many of the traditional - middle-class, higher caste, law-conforming, secure job holding people’s understandings of Indian society. One of the striking features of the autobiography is the author’s bold subaltern identity assertion. He loudly declares, at times with pride, at others with disgust, his location in the lower rungs of multiple stratification systems. Thus he declares: I am that rickshaw puller by the name of Naba, that truck-helper by the name ‘kick-worthy’, that angry lowly caste (chandal) by the name of Jiban, alcoholic by the name Gurjal, that thief by the name of Bhagaban, that dacoit by the identity of Agastya, that writer by the name of Bangal – all are me. They all are my fragmented nature. (Byapari 14) He continues that he was born in ‚untouchable Dalit family‛ ‚declared criminal due to birth‛ (Byapari 20), declares the futility of the former Dalit attempts at Sanskritisation and prescribes realising the glory of the Dalit identity. He has been the hungry, the refugee, the child labourer, the illiterate, the alcoholic, the ruffian, the wretched poor sucked into criminal world, the underground revolutionary, the prisoner and disbeliever. One of the aims of writing this autobiography has been to reveal to the readers, the injustice, oppression, helplessness and struggles of many of the disadvantaged populations of India. A powerful tool that aids him in doing so is the 91 THE APOLLONIAN Vol. 1, Issue. 1 (September 2014) ISSN 2393-9001 language used. The language is mostly colloquial and jarring to elite aesthetics defined by the upper caste and upper class citizens. Unconventionally revulsive similes, metaphors and analogies used seem to befittingly paint his social experiences, experience of the self, as well as that of fellow subaltern populations, as devoid of dignity, frustrating, revulsive and torturous. Speaking as an inmate of the jail he describes how on being tortured the prisoners’ ‚skull would crack and brain fluid would sprinkle out. There will be downpour of blood. Turning humans into lumps of giddy flesh *…+‛ (Byapari 230) He compares the event of the government official who had to take his word back as, ‚now he has to lick back again the saliva that he spat himself‛ (Byapari 357). Such use of language seems to be a conscious tool for unmasking the horrors of subaltern social experience, along with their pent up rage against the socially advantaged oppressors – which much of elite language or expressions may neutralise. Frustrated about his own struggle as the absolute poor in an attempt to live a life of ideology, he describes: ‚Life is the name of a horrible experience. Life is the name of a journey getting charred with torment. The life that I have live, am living, feels like as if someone is burning me alive on the pyres. There is no light anywhere, no road directions. There is none holding whose hand I can walk two steps‛ (Byapari 439). He says the life’s field that he treads has blood sucking ‚leeches‛ and ‚snakes‛. ‚It is the territory of tigers, bears and human- head-hunters‛(Byapari 439). Descriptions of his life mostly spell the tremendous torture and insecurities of a subaltern, ‚writing two lines, and associating with Neogiji for a few days, I am quoting elaborate ideology, but that my buttocks are exposed through my torn pants, I am oblivious‛ (Byapari 371). His blunt admission of his psychological traits bears testimony to the tremendous destructive emotions that may be nurtured in the minds of the have-nots due to continuous deprivation – ‚I too am not a decent person. In me too sleeps a wild bull.‛ It is striking to find how social stratification systems stratify social space and allot different spaces for different social strata. Byapari’s explores in great sensual 92 THE APOLLONIAN Vol. 1, Issue. 1 (September 2014) ISSN 2393-9001 details the majorly bleak, filthy, crowded, dilapidated, grey, constricted, barren, abandoned social settings where his life as a subaltern unfolds. Such spaces are constant neighbours to epidemics, exploitation, violence, injury, betrayal and crime. Thus as the low caste refugee family they were relegated to camps with inhuman conditions, with deplorable and short lived dole, food, medical, water supply, ridden with epidemics, hunger, thirst and high mortality rate. As the ‘rehabilitated’ refugee they spent their days in the rocky dry terrains of Dandakaranya surrounded by dense forests with fierce animals and fiercer tribes. As the migrant child labourer he travelled in passages between the coach toilets and on the steps, slept in freezing open platforms, in the master’s haystack or the lusty employer’s threatening veranda corner as the homeless on the platforms, as the absconding amidst the sweepers’ squatters beside the filthy bog, or heaps of medical waste; as the prisoner within the grim grey walls shrieking third degree torture; as the sweeper amidst the murky slimy stink of the elite. Describing the insecurity of the sleeping girl child on the open road at night he says, ‚the main road was then under ownership of few cows chewing the cud, few skin-peeled dogs and alcoholics of unsteady gait.‛ All these are concrete ways in which society silently works to relegate those in the lower rungs to spaces deprived of human dignity. The autobiography also offers a wealth of insights into the unorganised sector of the economy. Jaws stiffened for supporting his poverty stricken home and ailing family, Byapari became a migrating child labourer very early in life. His journeys are accounts of the great economic, physical, sexual, insecurities constantly faced by homeless child labourers ‘out in society’ and unorganised sector workers. Almost predictably with every job his salary is delayed and ultimately denied, he gets caught on false charges and beaten up in unknown lands of employment due to lack of credibility, taken for granted as a sexual toy by employers and goes sick and hungry for days. Even after years of life threatening toil, he fails to accumulate any savings. Similar trends continue as he grows up through jobs as dishwasher in 93 THE APOLLONIAN Vol. 1, Issue. 1 (September 2014) ISSN 2393-9001 restaurants, coal shops, attendant, cook, sweeper, truck-helper, wood collector, rickshaw puller, forest ranger and so on. All of them give detailed narration of the spontaneous discrimination, betrayal and violence by the privileged society on unorganised casual labourers, taking advantage of their voiceless-ness. Detailed also are how in attempt to show hypocritical political attempts of organising and representing these labourers. Again labour movements have been well documented from the perspective of an activist. Drifting in the torrents of the crude world, Byapari’s life-narration is a constant critique of dehumanising influences of a stratified society, which get fossilised further in urban social settings. He ponders on the thousand ways in which ‚humans invent walls between humans‛,while his fight reveals barbaric values of oppression that operate across such walls.
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